5 Top Leadership Articles for the Week of March 14, 2016

Each week I read a number of leadership articles from various online resources and share them across social media. Here are the five articles readers found most valuable last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think, too.

5 The Employee Engagement Problem No One Is Talking About by Jacob Shriar in B2Community

The number is now hovering around 32%, which is better than 30%, but still nothing to cheer about. To make matters worse, these numbers haven’t changed much in 15 years. So what’s going on? Do too many companies have old-school thinking leaders? Are the initiatives most companies put in place a waste of time/money/energy? Is there something deeper going on? Most employees are simply not engaged at work. Companies are obviously not creating an environment where employees can really shine.

My Comment: It’s one of those bedeviling questions: if it’s important, and if we know how to improve it, why aren’t we doing better? Shriar focuses on the important role manager’s play in employee engagement and it’s a vital focus. Another point he makes which I find needs constant emphasis: don’t do surveys unless you are fully committed and articulate (before launching the survey) a feedback plan. How will you respond to what you learn? If you don’t do anything as a result of the survey, it’s far worse than if you did no survey at all.

Trust is the secret ingredient for successful leadership by Randy Conley at Chief Learning Officer

What if successful leadership isn’t really that complicated? What if there is just one thing — not a title, power or position — that determines whether people followed a leader? What if one aspect of leadership is a non-negotiable, must-have characteristic that needs to be in place for people to pledge their loyalty and commitment to a leader? What if one single element defines how people experience working for a leader? Can it really be as simple as one thing? Yes. And that one thing is trust.

My Comment: Conley’s point – that trust is non-negotiable and the foundation of all your influence – is so vital, yet often ignored. I’ve heard leaders say they “won’t trust easily,” and I understand where they’re coming from, but their lack of trust comes at a high price: their own influence suffers.

Managers and workers disagree completely about what makes a good office culture by Justine Hofherr at Boston.com

What does it take to create a great workplace culture? If you ask managers, employees, and human resource professionals, you’re bound to get very different answers, according to a new employee engagement survey. Kronos asked over 1,800 workers separated into three groups — HR professionals, people managers, and full-time employees — questions about various aspects of workplace culture and employee engagement, such as, “Who defines workplace culture?” and, “What culture attributes matter most to employees?” Kronos found the three groups disagreed on almost everything.

My Comment: Perhaps unsurprisingly, each group thought they have more impact than the others, but the most telling question to me was how the there groups answered “What kills a positive workplace culture?” If you lead a team, pay attention to the answer to the answer employees share. I’ve observed the same realities in many, many clients’ workplaces.

10 Steps for Ensuring You Don’t Set Your Leaders Up to Fail by Edward Brown at ThoughtLeadersLLC

You’re a CEO whose star salesperson just surpassed all records again. When he did it last year, he asked you about moving up the corporate ladder, and you did not discourage his ambition. Clearly, it’s time to promote him to sales manager, so you do. Six months later, you’ve got a problem. Monday/Friday sales meetings are perfunctory affairs, the sales manager is back on the road calling on his old accounts, sales positions linger vacant, veteran salespeople have quit, and two big deals were lost to competitors you usually beat easily. Who is at fault? You. You knew sales manager was a vastly different job from salesperson, but did you make sure your guy was prepared for the differences?

My Comment: One of the most important decisions you’ll ever make is who to promote into positions of leadership and responsibility. Brown gives you a solid checklist of leadership skills to ensure you set your leaders up for success. In addition to this list, I would encourage you to pay attention to both: the results they achieve AND how they achieve them. Both are important.

The Future of the Employee Voice Is Social by Thomas Buus Madsen on HuffingtonPost

There are plenty of companies out there whose idea of an employee voice is still just the annual engagement survey. In many places, a once a year tick box exercise. Questions constrained by the employer, with a nod to letting people have their say with a couple of open ended options at the end. What do you most like about working here? What is the one thing that you would change if you could? This doesn’t really cut it in today’s world, and it certainly won’t work in 2025. It’s just too slow. Who wants to wait a year to share their opinion when they can send a tweet in seconds? The speed of technology development makes more specific predictions difficult. But the need for an employee voice will not diminish. If anything, the changes to our culture mean it will become more and more prevalent. More and more immediate.

My Comment: Madsen underscores something I’ve believed for a while now: the increase ease of communication and transparency of information mean that employers who don’t lead and manage well will be at a distinct disadvantage in the labor market. When people can readily (if not easily) become their own boss, or go across the street to a known better situation (or even to another department within your company), why should they stay with you?

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